


No Words

by TheSigyn



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 15:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4485163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Wordlessly she reached for him, like a child reaches in the darkness for comforting arms, desperate for something, anything, to take this terror away.” My version of the evening at the Bronze, at the end of Tabula Rasa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Words

**Author's Note:**

> This story came about when I realized that Buffy’s behavior and dead-eyed stare when her memory came back was more applicable to shock than resentment or sorrow. Sometimes words go away when that happens, and as far as we saw, they never spoke that night. Not a word.

 

  
    The shock of reality falling back into place left Buffy without words. Within three seconds, to go from a blank slate, a calm and secure certainty, with instincts to follow and companions to stand by, to be shocked again into a history of pain, and loss, and betrayal, and confusion, was like being resurrected all over again.

   _Is this hell?_

    While standing stunned she was knocked to the ground, beaten, kicked, and truthfully, she felt none of it.

    How fitting that the one guarding her back right then was Spike. The evil blood-sucking demon she’d been finding herself drawn to, because everything felt like it was hell, and he was the only thing that made sense in it. Spike, the only one she could talk to. Spike, the only one she could be honest with.

    Spike took the other vampires out for her, which was good, because in the state she was in, she would have just let them take her.

    Or was it good...? It would have been over if they’d killed her.

    The vampires dust, the loan shark intimidated, the crisis past, Spike reached for her hand... “You all right?”

     _I’m not all right. I’ll never be all right. The world is wrong, and I don’t belong in it._ But there were no words for it. She said nothing. Carefully, deliberately, she made herself stand. The world felt heavy around her, as if she were trying to swim through quicksand. She moved, each foot before the other, step, step, step, step.... She didn’t really know where she was going.

    Spike let her go.

    She walked for an hour before she felt she needed to sit down. The thoughts in her head were scattered, confused, and always, always pained. Giles... leaving... abandoning her.... Willow... slowly getting lost.... Dawn... always needing more.... Spike....

     _Spike._

    No. Let it go. The kiss happened because of the demon’s curse, the perfect end to the musical. It had nothing to do with how close they’d gotten as companions, how much she’d needed him these last weeks, how in tune she was starting to feel with the evil he was saturated with. The fire and the satisfaction she’d felt in his kiss in the brief moment before the curse fell away like a closing curtain, leaving them both gasping and staring. It wasn’t real.

    Nothing was real.

    She headed for The Bronze. Some part of her felt she wanted to get drunk, but the moment she stepped in the door, she knew she couldn’t. The only way to order a drink was to open her mouth, and her words were dead. The music hummed through her, though, and she could let it take her. Somehow, as song after song filtered through the thick air, time was going to pass. She listened, sometimes identifying with the music that played, sometimes dismissing it, sometimes not even hearing it.

    She sat at the front bar in perfect, silent, shock.

    She felt him before she saw him. Slayer instinct, his scent, the shape of him in the heavy air, something. He said nothing, waiting for her to give him words, to accept his presence, acknowledge him. She turned to the shape of him in the air, and saw him. He was really there.

    He stood by her, his face so sympathetic, his expression so accepting, his eyes weighted with love she kept trying to dismiss. She turned her face away. She didn’t want to be loved. She didn’t want this dark state she was in accepted. And as for sympathy...

    Only the dead could understand.

    He’d turned away without a word, leaving her to her misery, and to her horror, she felt him leave her. She could actually _feel_ it, as she’d felt him come to stand beside her. The weight of his presence in the air vanished, and she felt like she was falling.

     _Only the dead could understand...._

    It must have taken half a minute before anything she was feeling connected, but she looked up almost in a panic. She was alone. Giles was gone. Her other friends seemed a million miles away from her. Even Dawn seemed too difficult for her to try and reach.

    And Spike was right beside her in the darkness.

    Except, he wasn’t. She had turned away from him, rejected his acceptance, and he’d gone... he’d _gone!_

    She stood up, almost shaking, feeling like a little girl lost in a dark forest, and was almost stabbed with relief to see him across the club, at the back bar, the one that sold the hard liquor. The sorrow and resignation on his face was clear, even from across the room.

    She’d have run if she could. She crossed to him deliberately, still pushing through the thick and heavy air, feeling it part around her. The shock had not worn off, but she no longer wanted to be so alone. She sat beside him as his shot was set before him, but she didn’t look at him. She couldn’t. She could barely see, let alone speak. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his lips part, as if he was about to say something, but the dead eyed glassy stare with which she gazed into space seemed to give him pause. Instead, he downed his drink, and then waited beside her, watching her. Without words. Her hands were set before her on the bar, listless, forgotten. Almost as if he wasn’t doing it deliberately, he moved his hand to lay beside hers, an open invitation, but not a demand.

    She didn’t look at it for a long time. Then her eyes were drawn to it. The length of his fingers. The cords of musculature. The black nail polish that always chipped when he fought – and he was always fighting. The dead, pale, demon-charged skin.

    Skin against skin, warmth against coolness, life against death, her hand found itself in his almost without willing it. Her hand shook as she gripped him, like holding on to a lifeline, still staring into the space before her as if her eyes could penetrate the very air, pierce through the world, and gaze again upon heaven.

    At first he gripped her back, but soon he had to stop. She heard him grunt as her strength cut into him, bruising the flesh of his hand, but he said nothing, did not try to stop her. She gripped him harder and harder, a complete death grip, and she could... almost... _feel_....

    The shock broke as something crunched in his hand. She didn’t know if she’d actually fractured something, or simply caused two bones to grate together. She let him go and raised her hand to her face, shudders wracking her body, wishing she could still find the numbing blanket of shock. She wasn’t crying, it didn’t feel like crying, but a few tears fell out of her eyes anyway, as if she’d had them stored up for emergencies and just accidently dropped them.

    She was alive. She was here, this was the world, this was everything, and everything was pain and violence and anger and betrayal and loneliness. The whole world felt _evil_.

    She stood up in a near panic, as if she could escape, looking around the busy club as if for an exit. But she wasn’t after the doors. She fled quickly into shadow, hiding almost under the stairs and stood there, shaking, terrified of the world itself.

    Spike followed her. He was always following her. Into the darkness, he would always follow her. In sunshine and happiness, he could not survive, but in the shadows... in the horror....

    Wordlessly she reached for him, like a child reaches in the darkness for comforting arms, desperate for something, anything, to take this terror away. She didn’t think about what could happen – the repercussions of what this would mean, his feelings, or even her own. She pressed her mouth to his and let his hunger devour her, tasting him thoroughly, the strange inhuman taste of a vampire’s kiss, and the hint of cigarettes and whiskey. Blood sucker, killer, evil, she kissed it as if she would devour him in turn, and he was nothing loath to accept it.

    Her shakes of horror died, replaced by an excited tremble, a chime of relief that poured through the core of her, soothing the pain. Everything went away except for Spike. Giles’ abandonment – gone. Willow’s stupid spell – gone. All the weight of the wretched world – gone. She gasped for breath, reached for him again, their hands wandering over and around each other, wanting to touch everything, unable to touch it all at once.

    Heat built in her. Fire burned in her stomach, started to flow through her veins, her heart ached with longing and satisfaction, both, as he tore the passion out of her. This was wrong, this was so wrong. She knew she should not be making love to evil in the corner of The Bronze, and she couldn’t make herself let him go.

    Their kisses grew more and more heated, their hands more and more desperate. She could feel her groin clenching, ripening, aching for him to fill her. Her skin felt charged with molten lava, and he took her breath from her, sucking it out of her as if it were her blood. She knew he was just as charged. The kiss continued, as if someone had hit replay. Over and over and over again she pulled away to breathe, only to find his lips again in the shadows. Her shaking returned, no longer horror, but sheer lust, as the need for _more_ grew more and more urgent.

    She pulled away for another breath, and his voice shattered the replay. Until then there had been no words, nothing to break the eternity of fire between them. But eternity doesn’t last in reality. Time passes. Whispered, desperate, Spike breathed her name into her mouth, his hands pulling at her hips, as if he’d pull her away, into a darker shadow, into the alley, into the bathroom, behind the bar, anywhere where she’d let him release this power she’d charged him with. It was too potent, too powerful. It had gone on so long it was becoming actually painful, for both of them. He needed more. She knew, though the moment was beautiful, he couldn’t stand it anymore.

    This could not stand anymore.

    “Buffy...”

    He was begging her for an invitation. With only her name, she knew exactly what he was asking. She almost went with him. She almost let him take her. In a bathroom stall, against the wall in the alley, right bloody _there_ in the middle of The Bronze, she could tell he pretty much didn’t care anymore.

    She pulled away instead, breathing hard, her lips numb. How long had they been here, tasting each other? The song playing had changed. She had a feeling it had changed at least twice. A quarter of an hour?

    Spike gazed down at her, lust pouring from his eyes, his face as shocked as hers had been earlier. His hair was mussed. She’d been grabbing at it.

    She reached up and touched his mouth, both a memory of their kiss, and a request for silence. His smooth lips, his cool breath, tickled at her fingers. Her hands were shaking. He was, too. She let her hand barely touch his cheek, and she shook her head. No.

    There was barely even disappointment registered in his face, though she knew he understood. His unspoken request had been a step too far. For all her groin was a sunburst of swollen heat, she couldn’t let herself go that far. She couldn’t. She _shouldn’t..._

    She shook her head again, and stepped away from him. His shoulders sagged as he realized she really meant it. She was leaving, and she did not want him to follow. He made a move after her, to follow her, to stop her, to insist she stay and talk to him, at least. She moved her lips, in the only word she could find. _Please._

    It didn’t come out as a word. It barely came out as a shape in her mouth, not even a whisper, and he heard it anyway. In her eyes, in her face, in every line of her she knew the plea was obvious.

    He let her go.

    Buffy fled The Bronze, fled the music, fled the heat and the shadows for the cool and empty night outside. Spike did not follow her, though she half expected him to ignore her plea and pursue.

    Buffy walked home in a different kind of shock. She could ignore the kiss lost in song, as she ignored the kisses from him she remembered from the spell Willow had inadvertently cast on them a year and a half ago. It was a spell, it was the influence of another, it wasn’t real.

    But this one happened. This was real. The only influence was herself, and him, and the roaring hollow emptiness inside them both, hunger on his side, isolation on hers. Their creeping friendship, the peace she’d felt in his crypt, the acceptance she’d found at his side, the solace she had taken from him, was burned to ash by the fire that had just flared between them. Suddenly she hated him with a passion she hadn’t felt since he’d last tried to kill her.

    And her lips were still numb.

    She went into her darkened house – the others were already asleep – and found her bed. She crept into it without even undressing, pausing only to kick off her shoes. She closed her eyes, praying for the world to go away again.

    And as she lay, hoping for oblivion, Spike kissed her, and kissed her, and kissed her, over and over and over again, pulsing in her mind like a bright afterimage. Yesterday he’d chased her down, all but begging her, _We need to talk!_ But she didn’t want to. And now she couldn’t. The honesty, the acceptance, the quiet confessions between them were gone. She could talk _at_ him, say the things she knew she should say. Use insults and lies and sarcasm to push him away. Because she had to push him away. She couldn’t accept it about herself, the shadows, the darkness, the passionate embrace of evil. She couldn’t talk to him anymore.

    She had to rid herself of him. She had to harden herself. No more going to his crypt, no more chatting in the graveyard, no more getting drunk by his side. She had to wall him off, fight him off, push him away. He had been the only lifeline in her new existence, the only link to the death she longed for. He had been the only one she could talk to, the only one she could be honest with. And the honest words had been eaten, devoured like blood as they’d kissed in the shadows. No more talking honestly with Spike. There were no words for it all, anyway.

    No words at all.   
   

 


End file.
